May 23rd: Lindt Excellence Milk with a touch of Sea Salt

Kcal ??? Fat ??? Fat(sats) ??? Carbs ???

As showcased previously this year, Lindt have released a fair few new bars to their Excellence portfolio - see Wasabi & Coconut Intense flavours HERE. This latest addition to the Lindt Excellence milk chocolate range was one that I found on sale in my local Tesco supermarket, and it came described as 'Excellence milk with a touch of sea salt'. Given previous experience with Lindt and their salt enhanced chocolates, this was one I thought had a great deal of promise.

This 100.0g bar cost me in the region of £1.50 which I thought was reasonable given the expected quality that I hoped with follow. The packaging style was aligned to everything I had come across before with the Excellence range. It was modern, sleek and ultimately very classy looking - I've always thought Lindt's Excellence chocolates have been stunningly well presented. Aroma wise the bar smelt none to dissimilar to any other of the Lindt milk chocolates I had reviewed previous, with it's dairy focused, sweet cocoa smells coming quickly to the fore.

Following my taste test I'm pleased to report that this chocolate not only met, but managed to exceed my considerably high expectation levels. In my opinion, this new Milk with a touch of Sea Salt flavour built on all the glorious attributes of the Lindt Excellence Milk Extra Creamy, and introduced a further level of flavour depth with a deliciously moreish added salt lick. This chocolate had an impressively smooth development of flavours, moving from a light and crisp milky starer-base, to a more full-on, richer cream fueled experience with a salt hinted aftertaste. All this developed within what was a epically smooth, free-flowing melt - the mouth feel was as luxurious as ever with Lindt chocolates.

Overall you can probably tell I was very satisfied with this chocolate and it was one that I instantly fell in love with. I expected nothing less from the indications given by the packaging, presentation etc but even I didn't expect this bar to taste quite as heavenly as it did. The matching of the salt, with the sweeter, high quality milk chocolate was a synergy that I thought worked extremely well. As you will have likely of noted from my many reviews on chocolates with peanuts in, the addition of salt to chocolate is something I'm very fond of and this certainly only strengthened my opinion that it can only be a good thing. The taste was multi-dimensional and the texture was soft as silk and well paced - I literally have no complaints in these regards. This was certainly one of the best chocolates I've got around to reviewing this year and I can't recommend it enough. Milk chocolate fans owe it to themselves to try this one out.